Shoot ’em ups, commonly called as “shmups” because to its offensive language connotation, are a type that has dominated the video game industry for many years. Similar to beat ’em ups, shoot ’em ups were arcade mainstays that gained new life on home video game systems when laundry, pizzeria, and bodegas cabinets started to disappear. Fortunately, you no longer need a console to enjoy intense shooter action; the PC has evolved into a scorching platform for destroying foes with powerful ammunition.
What Is a Shmup?
For those who are unaware, a shoot ’em up is a video game in which you command a vehicle—sometimes a character—and engage in aerial battle with the adversary, usually while scrolling horizontally or vertically. They might be simple encounters in which you just dodge, shoot, return fire, and drop the odd bomb, or they can be very intricate encounters including counters, deflections, and combo systems. Think about Thunderforce, Battle Garegga, Gradius, R-Type, Super Star Soldier, or The term “shooters” used to relate to the genre, but it is now used to refer to various shooting games.
The sort of shooter makes the largest distinction between them. Bullet hell(Opens in a new window), the most popular shooter sub-genre right now, completely annihilates inexperienced pilots. Enemies cover the screen with lethal colored weapons, making it difficult to relax your sphincter and need precise movement and spatial awareness. However, bullet hell shooters are addictive adrenaline rushes if you’re prepared for a challenge. You may learn more about fixed, rail, tube, and many other kinds of shoot ’em ups at Racketboy’s Shmups 101 page(Opens in a new window).
Can You Play Shmups On Steam Deck?
Your Steam library is now available on Valve’s Linux-powered Steam Deck, a handy, transportable, and surprisingly competent gadget. You should think about purchasing the shmups on the following list for your Steam Deck since they were all obtained from Valve’s online game store. You can discover some top-notch shmups to play on the move among the thousands of Steam Deck Verified and Playable titles available in the Steam shop.
Here is how Valve’s mechanism for verifying Steam Decks works. Games that have been verified have a green tick on the shop page, indicating that the game will function properly on the Deck. A yellow button indicates playability, indicating that it is playable but requires some small adjustments to make it work smoothly (like entering text, for example). Other titles either haven’t been tried out on SteamOS or are completely unusable there.
Ready to Shoot ‘Em Up?
Fortunately, PC players have access to a huge selection of shoot ’em ups, from bullet hell to classic. Consider this guide a starting point if you want to learn more about what the genre has to offer.
Deathsmiles
A number of Cave’s shmup releases have achieved great success, with Deathsmiles standing out as one of the best. In the supernatural shooter Deathsmiles, you take control of one of five gothic lolitas who use familiars and powerful powers to protect their territory against an invasion of demons.
The bullet-hell shooter with horizontal scrolling has six game modes, nonlinear advancement, local co-op play, massive adversaries, large explosions, a counter system, and an exhilarating goth-rock soundtrack. Deathsmiles is an all-around entertaining PC shooter, despite its slightly claustrophobic locations and relatively old graphics from when it was first released in the arcade in 2007.
DoDonPachi Resurrection
Yes, Cave delivers again another timeless shooter. You take control of one of three time-traveling pilots in the vertically scrolling DonDonPachi Resurrection as they attempt to fix a history that has been tampered with by an android gone rogue who is trying to escape human enslavers. Really, it’s just a lame excuse to detonate massive enemy ships and robots.
This space shooter has three playable spacecraft, three assault techniques, and the bullet-cancelling Hyper Counter System, as well as high-powered offensive and defensive choices for obliterating aliens. Additionally, there are various endings, eight gaming modes, and local co-op play throughout the game.
Geometry Wars 3
For a very, very long time, top-down arcade shooters have been a mainstay of video games. Robotron: 2084 popularized the genre in the 1980s because to its simple twin-stick controls, while Smash TV in the 1990s added Paul Verhoeven and Arnold Schwarzenegger panache. Most recently, Geometry Wars was the greatest shooter, not cutting-edge stuff like Halo or Gears of War.
The addictive shape-shooting action is brought into the third dimension with almost flawless results in Geometry Wars 3: Dimensions by Lucid Games, staying true to its moniker. A Geometry Dash – like music pulses in the background while wire-framed items erupt into colorful pyrotechnics in the game’s Tron-like grid-like rendering. The senses are treated to a feast.
Mushihimesama
You shouldn’t watch Mushihimesama if you detest bugs. Unless, of course, you have irrational dreams of wiping out as many as you can. You play as a princess in Cave’s insect-themed fantasy shooter as you fight enormous creepy crawlies over five vertically scrolling levels.
There are three game modes in Mushihimesama: novice, normal, and arrange. Novice is a more moderate version of the bullet-hell experience and is intended for newbies who may not be ready to plunge into the full-on frenzy. Normal is an accurate reproduction of the legendary Japanese arcade game. In the remixed game Arrange, you start with the most firepower and automatic bomb drops. Three different weapon kinds and two different option types allow you to tailor your offensive.
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